Reflections on Policies, Practices, Pronouncements,
and Progress
Dear Colleagues,
Introduction
As I begin to write
this message—at 35,000 feet. . . finally heading home after four weeks of
uninterrupted school consultations in Massachusetts, California, Maryland, and
Florida—I am reflecting on this past year’s educational events, school
encounters, Blog discussions, and lessons learned.
During the past
month, for example, I have helped a large school district begin to redesign its
multi-tiered systems of support for its many students from poverty,
trauma, failure, and frustration.
I helped another
district begin to negotiate a radically-different approach to teacher
evaluation which will include fewer “dog-and-pony” teacher observations,
and more attention to how teachers develop and self-evaluate curriculum and
instruction, how they nurture and demonstrate leadership and specialization
skills, and how new, untenured teachers receive effective professional
development and mentoring.
In yet another
district, I led two separate School Leadership Team meetings—with the
district’s superintendent and senior administrative leaders in attendance—that
focused on healing past staff-principal rifts that were emotionally undermining
school collaboration and commitment.
These meetings also included me encouraging the district’s leaders to
provide disproportionately more resources to these schools. . . to
address their disproportionately greater student needs (relative to other
schools in the district).
Finally, to end my
four-week journey (which included snow storms, two unintended stays in airport
hotels after missing connecting flights, and two “laundry days” as I ran out of
clothes) . . . .
I was fortunate to
spend two days with Dr. Doug Reeves and twelve phenomenal colleagues from Creative
Leadership Solutions talking about the state of education, and how to work
with school and districts to help them attain the student, staff, and system
outcomes they need and desire.
_ _ _ _ _
Creative
Leadership Solutions is Doug’s “next generation organization” that has
taken many of the past practices from his Leadership and Learning Center,
and refocused them on:
* Providing personalized
services to states, districts, and schools; where
* We listen to
client needs—helping them to identify what they truly need for success and
sustainability;
* Guide them
through the planning, capacity-building, and implementation processes needed
for change; while
* Expanding and
maximizing their existing resources. . . as ineffective and inefficient
practices are phased out and eliminated.
I believe that Creative
Leadership Solutions truly lives its name.
Its experienced, creative, and nationally-recognized leaders collaborate
with district and school leaders to implement evidence-based and customized solutions
to address the most challenging student problems faced across our country.
These problems
include:
* Students who are
academically at-risk and unprepared, disengaged and unresponsive, struggling
and underachieving, and unsuccessful and failing
* Students who
demonstrate social, emotional, and behavioral challenges because of skill and
ability, motivation and performance, and/or personal or situational experiences
* Students who need competent English Language
Learning or disability-related instruction and support
* Students who are
teased, taunted, bullied, harassed, or hazed; or who are not receiving
strategic or intensive multi-tiered interventions based on psychometrically-sound
diagnostic assessments
* Students who are
victimized by policies and practices that are well-intended, but unfounded. . .
including those related to poverty, disproportionality, differentiated
instruction, and teacher effectiveness
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
The Year in Review: Educational Issues and Creative Leadership
Solutions
This is the
twenty-fourth Blog that I have written during the past year. To prepare for this review, I have
categorized the previous twenty-three Blogs into five clusters:
* Leadership and
Strategic Planning
* Research to
Practice
* School
Discipline, Classroom Management, and Student Self-Management
* Multi-Tiered
Services at the District/School Levels
* Special Education
Law and Practice
While briefly
reviewing what we’ve learned in these five areas this year through these
twenty-three Blogs (and giving you direct links to each one), I will
simultaneously “introduce” my Creative Leadership Solutions colleagues—who
collectively have real-world expertise in all of these areas.
*** TO LINK TO EACH BLOG, CLICK ON THE DATE AT
THE BEGINNING OF EACH CITATION ***
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Leadership and Strategic Planning
Introducing
Three Creative Leadership Solutions Partners
An inspirational learner and leader, Dr. Latoya Dixon is the Director of the
Office of School Transformation at the South Carolina Department of Education.
Latoya's passion is rooted in her story of how education transformed her very
own life.
Doris
Moore most recently served as an award-winning principal for 12 years at
Overland Trail Elementary School just south of Kansas City. With expertise in school renewal, teacher
effectiveness, cultural competence, and instructional leadership, she has been
recognized for developing school improvement systems to increase student
achievement—especially in low performing urban schools.
A former Associate Superintendent and
Superintendent, Dr. John Van Pelt
has extensive experience in increasing student achievement and narrowing the
achievement gap through his work with central office staff and school
boards. His professional development
expertise includes such areas as data teams and results-oriented
decision-making, leadership performance coaching, and classroom walk-through
and coaching.
_ _ _ _
_
This
Year’s Strategic Planning Lessons Learned
Among the Lessons Learned in this area are
that Districts and Schools are best-served when they:
* Use the science of strategic planning and
organizational development—rather than the School Improvement Plans that are
required in many states.
* Choose their strategic directions based on
an “organizational compass” represented in their mission, vision, and value
statements—that are internalized and “lived” by all staff, and that provide a
“reality check” for all programmatic decisions.
* Make decisions that will support, advance,
and institutionalize effective school and schooling practices and
outcomes—rather than appease individuals and small groups of special interest
groups.
* Organize, nurture, and reinforce shared
leadership structures and practices across all staff—rather than depended on a
small number of staff who either are “bearing the burden” or “controlling the
agenda.”
* Remember that people—and their
interpersonal and inter-professional interactions—drive the process of success,
more than the programs and initiatives that are set up to create the success.
_ _ _ _
_
This
Year’s Blogs in this Area
March
5, 2017 The Revolving Door of the
Superintendency: A Case Study on Resetting the Course of a School
District. . . When Mission, Vision, and Values Count More than Resources, Requirements,
and Results
March
18, 2017 What Happens When School
Leaders Make Decisions Not for the Greater Good, but for the Greater
Peace: “You Can Please Some of the People Some of the Time. . . But You
Can’t Please All of the People All of the Time”
August
12, 2017 Back to the Future:
What My High School Reunion Reminded Me about High School Reform. . . The
Non-Academic Essentials for High School Students’ Success
August
26, 2017 The Top Ten Ways that
Educators Make Bad, Large-Scale Programmatic Decisions: The Hazards of
ESEA/ESSA’s Freedom and Flexibility at the State and Local Levels (Part I of
III)
June
17, 2017 School Improvement,
Strategic Planning, and Effective School and Schooling Policies and
Practices: A Summer Review of My Previous Blogs in these Areas (Part I of
IV)
_ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _
Research to Practice
Introducing
Three Creative Leadership Solutions Partners
Dr.
Brandon Doubek is internationally known for his expertise in leadership,
instruction, curriculum, and assessment strategies; and for his skills in
improving adult learning and group interactions.
Kim
Marshall was sixth-grade teacher, central office curriculum director, and
elementary principal in the Boston Public Schools for 32 years. Since 2002, Kim has spent most of his time
coaching principals, and providing assistance in the areas of teacher
supervision and evaluation, time management, the effective use of student
assessments, and curriculum unit design.
Jo
Peters is a former principal and senior professional development associate,
and a highly-experienced leadership coach who has coached and mentored
elementary, middle, and high school principals from across the country. Her
other areas of expertise include standards-based assessment, and curriculum
design and alignment.
_ _ _ _
_
This
Year’s Research to Practice Lessons Learned
* The current (2015) Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA/ESSA) has virtually replaced the ESEA/No
Child Left Behind term “scientifically-based” with the term
“evidence-based,” providing a specific statutory definition.
* Educators need to recognize that they must
independently validate any program, intervention, or strategy that claims
it is “research-based”—as the research could be sound, unsound, or
non-existent.
* Even when research validly supports a
specific program, intervention, or strategy, educators still need to validate
that (a) it is applicable to the students, staff, schools, or situations
that they want to change/affect, and (b) it can be realistically implemented
“in the real world” (as opposed to a controlled or “laboratory” setting).
* John Hattie’s research significantly
contributes to educational decision-making. . . but educators need to fully
understand the decision rules and outcomes inherent in his meta-analytic
methods and outcomes.
* Even when Hattie’s research provides a
programmatic, intervention, or strategy-related “recommendation,” educators
need to understand that (a) meta-analytic research often pools research
focusing on the same approach, but using different methodologies; and (b) it is
effective methodology, implemented with fidelity, that ultimately determines
student, staff, and/or situational success.
_ _ _ _
_
This
Year’s Blogs in this Area
September
9, 2017 “Scientifically based”
versus “Evidence-based” versus “Research-based”—Oh, my!!! Making
Effective Programmatic Decisions: Why You Need to Know the History and
Questions Behind these Terms (Part II of III)
September
25, 2017 Hattie’s Meta-Analysis
Madness: The Method is Missing !!! Why Hattie’s Research is a
Starting-Point, but NOT the End-Game for Effective Schools (Part III of
III)
_ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _
School Discipline, Classroom Management,
Student Self-Management
Introducing
Three Creative Leadership Solutions Partners
Dr.
Michelle Edwards is a life-long learner who taught in the Chicago Public
Schools, and was an elementary school principal in Washington, D.C. Her work in preparing school leaders for
success in working with students of color and from poverty is unmatched in this
country.
Kelvin
Oliver is an educational consultant with Texas Educators for Restorative
Practices (TEXRP) with ten years of experience as a special education teacher,
classroom teacher, campus math specialist, district curriculum specialist,
assistant principal, and principal.
During his wide-ranging career, Ronnie E. Phillips has been a teacher,
counselor, department head, principal, and superintendent. He is especially known for his work as a
turn-around principal, and expert in improving school organization and
performance.
_ _ _ _
_
This
Year’s School Discipline Lessons Learned
* ESEA/ESSA (2015) and IDEA (2004) do not
cite, mandate, or even recommend the PBIS (upper case, with acronym)
framework advocated by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special
Education Programs (OSEP), its tax-funded National Technical Assistance
Centers, or the state departments of education who have accepted federal funds
contingent on implementing these specific frameworks.
* Instead, these federal laws require—under
very specific circumstances—the consideration of “positive behavioral supports
and interventions” (lower case) for specific groups of students.
* Research commissioned by the U.S.
Department of Education concluded that OSEP’s PBIS framework has significant
psychometric and procedural flaws that are preventing their full
implementation, and (at times) delaying needed services and supports to
students who are demonstrating significant social, emotional, or behavioral
challenges.
* The ultimate goal of a school discipline
initiative is the developmentally-appropriate preschool through high school
teaching and mastery of students’ social, emotional, and behavioral
self-management. These outcomes are
manifested through students’ effective interpersonal, social problem-solving,
conflict prevention and resolution, and emotional control and coping skills.
* The scientific foundation of an effective
school discipline, classroom management, and student self-management initiative
involves: Positive School and Classroom
Climates and Prosocial Teacher-Student Relationships; Behavioral Expectations
and Social Skills Instruction; Behavioral Accountability and Student
Motivation; Consistency across All of these Components; and Application and
Extensions to All School Settings and Peer Groups.
* This scientific foundation is the same
foundation that addresses the social, emotional, and behavioral effects of
student poverty, trauma, teasing, bullying, and disproportionality. This foundation is more defensible than the
research-thin character education, mindfulness, restorative justice, and
social-emotional learning framework approaches.
_ _ _ _
_
This
Year’s Blogs in this Area
January
7, 2017 Education Week Series on
RtI Highlights Kentucky/Appalachian Mountain Grant Site’s Successful School
Discipline Program: An Overview of the Scientific Components Behind this
Success, and a Free Implementation Guide for Those Who Want to Follow
February
19, 2017 Federal and State Policies
ARE NOT Eliminating Teasing and Bullying in Our Schools: Teasing and
Bullying is Harming our Students Psychologically and Academically—Here’s How to
Change this Epidemic through Behavioral Science and Evidence-based Practices
June
4, 2017 Effective School-wide
Discipline Approaches: Avoiding Educational Bandwagons that Promise the Moon,
Frustrate Staff, and Potentially Harm Students. . . Implementation
Science and Systematic Practice versus Pseudoscience, Menu-Driven Frameworks,
and “Convenience Store” Implementation
November
4, 2017 New Article Again Debunks
“Mindfulness” in Schools: Teaching Emotional and Behavioral
Self-Management through Cognitive-Behavioral Science and The Stop & Think
Social Skills Program. . . Don’t We Really Just Want Students to “Stop &
Think”? [Part I of III]
November
18, 2017 Teaching Social,
Emotional, and Behavioral Self-Management Skills to All Students: The
Cognitive-Behavioral Science Underlying the Success of The Stop & Think
Social Skills Program. . . Don’t We Really Just Want Students to “Stop &
Think”? [Part II of III]
December
2, 2017 Teaching Social, Emotional,
and Behavioral Self-Management Skills to All Students: The
Cognitive-Behavioral Science Underlying the Success of The Stop & Think
Social Skills Program. . . Don’t We Really Just Want Students to “Stop &
Think”? [Part III of III]
July
15, 2017 Students’ Mental Health
Status and Wellness, and School Discipline and Disproportionality: A
Summer Review of My Previous Blogs in these Areas (Part III of IV)
July
29, 2017 School Climate and Safety,
and School Discipline and Classroom Management: A Summer Review of My
Previous Blogs in these Areas (Part IV of IV)
_ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _
Multi-Tiered Services at the District/School
Levels
Introducing
Three Creative Leadership Solutions Partners
Dr.
Philip Hickman is a national award-winning transformational K-12 leader who
specializes in educational technology and personalized learning. Currently a superintendent in Columbus,
Mississippi, he was an assistant superintendent with Houston Independent School
District, as well as in Kansas City, Missouri.
Lisa
Almeida is nationally known consultant who works with leaders and teachers
in the areas of standards, assessment, data-driven decision making, and
professional learning communities.
Dr.
Linda O'Konek was the Executive Director of Education Accountability, and
the Executive Director of Elementary Schools for the Norfolk Public Schools
(VA) for many years. Her experience
centers on working with teachers, administrators, and school boards in the
areas of leadership development and accountability planning, data-driven
decision-making, and principal evaluation frameworks.
_ _ _ _
_
This
Year’s Multi-Tiered Services Lessons Learned
* The term “response to intervention” does
not appear in either ESEA/ESSA (2015) or IDEA (2004), and these laws
do not cite, mandate, or even recommend the MTSS (upper case, with
acronym) framework advocated by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of
Special Education Programs (OSEP), its tax-funded National Technical Assistance
Centers, or state departments of education who have accepted federal funds
contingent on implementing these specific frameworks.
* Instead, ESEA/ESSA (2015) introduces and
defines the term “multi-tiered systems of support” (lower case), specifying
when it should be implemented, and with what specific groups of students.
* Research commissioned by the U.S.
Department of Education concluded that OSEP’s MTSS framework was not successful
in remediating early elementary students’ literacy skills when compared with
matched students who continued to receive differentiated instruction in their
general education classrooms.
* ESEA/ESSA (2015) encourages districts and
schools to develop their own defensible multi-tiered system of supports that is
tailored to their specific students’ needs.
* There is a research-based and state
field-tested multi-tiered system available that focuses on early
identification, assessment, and instructional or intervention approaches. This system uses a “21st Century” functional
assessment approach, and its depends on classroom, grade-level (collegial), and
building-level (multi-disciplinary) data-driven problem-solving that determines
the underlying reasons for students’ academic or behavioral struggles.
_ _ _ _
_
This
Year’s Blogs in this Area
January
22, 2017 ESEA/ESSA Tells Schools
and Districts: Build Your Own Multi-Tier System of Supports for Your Students’
Needs--- Focus on Your Principles, Students, and Staff. . .and Verify the
ESEA/ESSA “Guidance” Advocated by Some National Groups
October
7, 2017 Improving Student Outcomes
When Your State Department of Education Has Adopted the Failed National MTSS
and PBIS Frameworks: Effective and Defensible Multi-Tiered and Positive
Behavioral Support Approaches that State Departments of Education Will Approve
and Fund (Part I of II)
October
21, 2017 Improving Student Outcomes
When Your State Department of Education Has Adopted the Failed National MTSS
and PBIS Frameworks: Effective Research-to-Practice Multi-Tiered
Approaches that Facilitate All Students' Success (Part II of II)
_ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _
Special Education Law and Practice
Introducing
the Last Two Creative Leadership Solutions Partners
As the daughter of immigrant parents and a
language learner herself, Alexandra
Guilamo is a nationally-recognized expert in effective systems and
practices for culturally- and linguistically-diverse students (especially dual
language and English language learners), as well as the observation and
evaluation of teachers in culturally- and linguistically-diverse classrooms.
Using innovation in curriculum design and
instructional practices, Leslie A.
Birdon is a National Board-certified educator who has helped elementary
through high school schools with large at-risk student populations in Texas and
Louisiana to make significant learning and proficiency gains in literacy, math,
and science.
_ _ _ _
_
This
Year’s Special Education Lessons Learned
* In order to accurately understand, track,
plan for, and address the needs of students with disabilities, districts and
schools need to differentiate these students across the thirteen different
disability areas.
* As an expansion of Rowley, the unanimous Endrew F. Supreme
Court decision clarified and expanded schools’ responsibilities relative to the
delivery of a free and appropriate public education (FAPE) to students with
disabilities (SWDs):
1. The Supreme Court stated, “The goals may differ, but every child
should have the chance to meet challenging objectives. Of course, this
describes a general standard, not a formula.
But whatever else can be said about it, this standard is markedly more
demanding than the “merely more than de minimis” test applied by the
Tenth Circuit.”
_ _ _ _ _
2. FAPE must be
determined in the context of how a student’s disability impacts the services
and supports needed in an Individual Education Plan (IEP).
_ _ _ _ _
3. SWDs are not guaranteed
to make educational progress.
_ _ _ _ _
4. Having considered
only two cases, involving only two of the thirteen different disabilities
specified in IDEA, the Court refrained from specifying absolute decision
rules relative to how districts should provide FAPE to all SWDs.
_ _ _ _ _
5. The Court noted its
“deference” to the expertise and judgement of the professionals in a school
district—albeit in a partnership with the Parents—when writing an IEP, and it
“vests these officials with responsibility for decisions of critical importance
to the life of a disabled child.”
_ _ _ _ _
6. Finally, the Court
stated that IDEA’s provision of FAPE did not include “an
education that aims to provide a child with a disability opportunities to
achieve academic success, attain self-sufficiency, and contribute to society
that are substantially equal to the opportunities afforded children without
disabilities.”
_ _ _ _
_
This
Year’s Blogs in this Area
February
4, 2017 ESEA/ESSA, School
Improvement, Race/Ethnic Status, and Students with Disabilities: We Need
to Differentiate Disability Just as We Differentiate Race and Ethnicity
April
2, 2017 Special Education Services
Just Got Easier. . . and Harder: The Supreme Court's Endrew F. Decision
Re-Defines a “Free Appropriate Public Education” for Students with Disabilities
(Part I)
April
23, 2017 The Endrew F. Decision
Re-Defines a “Free Appropriate Public Education" (FAPE) for Students with
Disabilities: A Multi-Tiered Academic Instruction-to-Intervention Model
to Guide Your FAPE Decisions (Part II)
May
14, 2017 The Endrew F. Decision
Re-Defines a “Free Appropriate Public Education" (FAPE) for Students with
Disabilities: A Multi-Tiered School Discipline, Classroom Management, and
Student Self-Management Model to Guide Your FAPE (and even Disproportionality)
Decisions (Part III)
July
1, 2017 The New Every Student
Succeeds Act (ESEA/ESSA), and Multi-Tiered and Special Education
Services: A Summer Review of My Previous Blogs in these Areas (Part II of
IV)
_ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _
Summary
It has been my
pleasure to make these Blogs available to you over the past year (and more). I hope that this summary of the implications for
this year’s most important “policy, practice, pronouncement, and progress” decisions
(reflected in this year’s past Blogs) will motivate you to think about how we
can all make the new year in education—nationally, and at the state and local
levels—the most successful possible for all of our students.
But as the year
slowly fades, I also hope that you will take some time for yourself and your
family—to renew, refresh, and reinvigorate.
The holiday season
truly gives us a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the blessings in our
lives, and to share our gratitude with family and friends.
I am thankful for
professionals like you—dedicated to your students, your colleagues, and to the
important work that you do. I know how
you strive to make every day successful, so that everyone’s tomorrow will be
better in turn.
Happy New Year,
friends !!!
Best,
Howie
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